Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws
in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...
Fork time? Maybe all the anti-systemd zealots were right all along…
That would be the case if everyone used systemd, but it’s not, sysvinit distros still exist and they’re not going away in the foreseeable future.
That’s nice. Doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be stored somewhere, if the maintainers end up facing legal pressure to implement it. Opposing one (optional) way to store it won’t fix the issue, it’ll just result in the same splintering of competing standards we see everywhere else, with the attendant difficulties in ensuring security and quality across the board. In other things, that might matter less, but if we’re pissed about having to hand over PII to one instance, I’d be even more wary of it being stolen.
You’d be cutting off one leaf of a tree.
I could agree with this if the reason for this PR wasn’t age verification, that’s indeed a battle that needs to be fought, on every piece of the puzzle.
Are you going to oppose every other system that allows storing data too, because it might be used to store data for age verification?
No, it’s a battle that needs to be fought at the focal points: lawmakers, law enforcement, developers implementing the verification tools, companies using them.
Spending time and energy waging a culture war over the most insignificant, replaceable, trivial part of it will achieve nothing. It sacrifices all nuance and bulldozes all discussion of other merits (or issues) systemd might have.
There are legitimate, reasonable complaints to have with systemd. “We added a data field, which we’re trying to make sure doesn’t end up in the wrong hands” isn’t one.
Fuck these laws, and fuck the fascists using kids as pretense for surveillance.
That’s nice. Doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be stored somewhere, if the maintainers end up facing legal pressure to implement it. Opposing one (optional) way to store it won’t fix the issue, it’ll just result in the same splintering of competing standards we see everywhere else, with the attendant difficulties in ensuring security and quality across the board. In other things, that might matter less, but if we’re pissed about having to hand over PII to one instance, I’d be even more wary of it being stolen.
You’d be cutting off one leaf of a tree.
Are you going to oppose every other system that allows storing data too, because it might be used to store data for age verification?
No, it’s a battle that needs to be fought at the focal points: lawmakers, law enforcement, developers implementing the verification tools, companies using them.
Spending time and energy waging a culture war over the most insignificant, replaceable, trivial part of it will achieve nothing. It sacrifices all nuance and bulldozes all discussion of other merits (or issues) systemd might have.
There are legitimate, reasonable complaints to have with systemd. “We added a data field, which we’re trying to make sure doesn’t end up in the wrong hands” isn’t one.
Fuck these laws, and fuck the fascists using kids as pretense for surveillance.